BOOK THE SECOND

5. Chapter V

THE POOR TORTOISE. NEW CHANGES FOR NYDIA.

THE morning sun shone over the small and odorous garden enclosed within the
peristyle of the house of the Athenian. He lay reclined, sad and
listlessly, on the smooth grass which intersected the viridarium; and a
slight canopy stretched above, broke the fierce rays of the summer sun.

When that fairy mansion was first disinterred from the earth they found in
the garden the shell of a tortoise that had been its inmate. That animal,
so strange a link in the creation, to which Nature seems to have denied all
the pleasure of life, save life's passive and dream-like perception, had
been the guest of the place for years before Glaucus purchased it; for
years, indeed which went beyond the memory of man, and to which tradition
assigned an almost incredible date. The house had been built and
rebuilt--its possessors had changed and fluctuated--generations had
flourished and decayed--and still the tortoise dragged on its slow and
unsympathizing existence. In the earthquake, which sixteen years before had
overthrown many of the public buildings of the city, and scared away the
amazed inhabitants, the house now inhabited by Glaucus had been terribly
shattered. The possessors deserted it for many days; on their return they
cleared away the ruins which encumbered the viridarium, and found still the
tortoise, unharmed and unconscious of the surrounding destruction. It
seemed to bear a charmed life in its languid blood and imperceptible
motions; yet it was not so inactive as it seemed: it held a regular and
monotonous course; inch by inch it traversed the little orbit of its domain,
taking months to accomplish the whole gyration. It was a restless voyager,
that tortoise!--patiently, and with pain, did it perform its self-appointed
journeys, evincing no interest in the things around it--a philosopher
concentrated in itself. There was something grand in its solitary
selfishness!--the sun in which it basked--the waters poured daily over
it--the air, which it insensibly inhaled, were its sole and unfailing
luxuries. The mild changes of the season, in that lovely clime, affected it
not. It covered itself with its shell--as the saint in his piety--as the
sage in his wisdom--as the lover in his hope.